Mebert, the former School Board chair, claimed in early March in the complaint that Crago copied a portion of an email she sent to him on the school's state adequacy aid issue into a community commentary he had published in Foster's Daily Democrat and quoted during a City Council meeting.

The email, which she sent to Crago on Feb. 21, righted a wrong in a conversation Crago had with another city councilor over the state adequacy issue.
Mebert, who wrote in the email that she has been dealing with the issue for a while, wrote that in fiscal year 2013, 37 municipalities are receiving less in adequacy than what the state formula says they should be receiving.
She said 178 municipalities are receiving more than they should and 21 are receiving no adequacy at all. She said Dover is one of the 37 municipalities that are underfunded. Her email, which is included in her complaint, includes dollar amounts for many of the overfunded and underfunded municipalities.

“The basic adequacy formula is easy to follow, but the adjustments and caps that have been put in place over the years make understanding the whole situation quite challenging,” Mebert writes.

A significant portion of her email, word for word, landed in a community commentary by Crago just nine days later.

While Crago did say he used her work, he claims he did nothing wrong, stating his commentary was not a scholarly work and did not require credit or footnotes.

Mebert's complaint said Crago plagiarized, but Mebert did not indicate what Crago did that was against the City Charter or the city code.

When someone wishes to file a complaint against an elected appointed official, the head of the commission Dana Lariviere said, the commission gets together to see if the complaint meets criteria to move on to a more formal investigation, reviews the essence of the complaint and communicates with the parties involved.

“In general, it's intended to be a route for any citizen to say, 'Something went wrong here, I think something is not right.' It is a way for people to get (a problem) addressed,” Lariviere said.

Lariviere said there are different criteria they can find the complaint violating code/charter.

According to the complaint, the allegations that can be made include eligibility for elective office, conflicts of interest, disqualification from decision making process, private use of city property, acceptance of gifts and gratuities, disposition of fees and misuse of information, to name a few.

The commission was unable to prove that Crago went against the charter, code or the state laws, and because of this, the complaint, according to Lariviere, did not go through to a formal hearing.

“In this particular case, we met, we reviewed, we communicated with both parties and now we need to unseal the minutes,” Lariviere said, adding that will be done as soon as he can get a quorum together.

A report to the City Council was made public on March 25, though, and reads the commission unanimously decided the complaint failed to meet ethical violation requirements under Chapter 22 of the Dover City Code.

The complaint, according to the report, was dismissed for the following reasons:

“Under Section 22-13A of the Dover Code — Failure to “ ... state the specific applicable provision of the City Charter or Code on which the complainant relies in making the Complaint,” and “Under Section 22-13C --- 4 “ ... stating facts that if true would not constitute a violation of the ethical provisions of the City Charter, City Code or state law.”

Crago said he was grateful for the work of the Ethics Commission and pleased at how professional they were in dealing with the complaint.

“I was outraged that it happened,” he said of the complaint, adding that he took the email from Mebert as a sign that she “wanted to be a part of the solution.”

He said the complaint was a “clear attempt of character assassination.”

When asked why he did not credit Mebert and if he regretted not crediting her in the commentary, he said, “A (commentary) is nothing more than a way to get information out to the people,” and that he did give her credit through his city councilor webpage.

“I thought I was doing everything that really reflected this was a team effort,” he said.

Another email included in the complaint was an email Mebert said she sent to Crago after viewing his commentary.

It reads:

Mike,

I'd like to know why you think it is acceptable to copy what I wrote to you in an email and place it in a community commentary? Someone might think you actually did some research on this issue. I suspect you didn't even check to see if my numbers were correct. This plagiarism is particularly egregious given Thursday's commentary in which you accused the superintendent and board of doing nothing. Once again, you are misleading the public. This really must stop.

Carolyn

Crago claims he vetted the work and calls Mebert's complaint “inappropriate.”

“If I wanted to, I could be focusing on all these little hurts, slanders and insults, but it would just tie me up in knots and I refuse to let that happen,” Crago said, adding that he knows he has made mistakes, but also knows he did nothing wrong in this case.

Mebert was contacted, but chose to not comment on the issue.

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